Footnotes

[9] Eb or Eeb is the mythical island home of the gods and goddesses in the Marshallese pantheon. It is considered to lie west or south of the Marshall Islands. As far as archaeologists can reconstruct, the immediate homeland of the Marshallese lay either in Kiribati (south) or in the Pohnpei area (west), although the intermediate homeland has to be searched for somewhere in the small islands off Vanuatu and the Solomons. Linguistically, the Marshallese most likely derive from the Austronesian speaking, Lapita people, who colonized most of the South Pacific 3500-3000 years ago. The first settlement of the Marshall Islands is at least 2500 years old, but may be older than that.
[10] Coconut fiber (ekkwal) or sennit is made from the fibers contained in coconut husks. The husks are thrown in pits which have been dug into the soil, at least two or three feet into the ground water lens. After the matter binding the fibers in the husk has rotted away, the fibers are extracted, washed, sun dried and then intertwined to make string. Several such strings could be intertwined to make rope.
[11] The Pejwak (Anous stolidus) is a resident breeder on most atolls of the Marshall Islands.
[12] The Jekad (Anous tenuirostris) is a resident breeder on most atolls of the Marshall Islands. It commonly feeds of small surface fish, which are also hunted by tuna. A flock of jekad feeding on the water surface is an almost infallible indication that there will also be a school of tuna, ready to be caught.